Cross Disciplinary Studies Minor in Bioinformatics

Offered at: San Luis Obispo Campus

Through an inter-college collaboration, the Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science and Software Engineering, and Statistics Departments offer a Cross-Disciplinary Studies Minor (CDSM) in Bioinformatics. Bioinformatics lies at the intersection of computational sciences and biology. The CDSM in Bioinformatics creates a strong foundation in molecular biology as well as the design and applications of software and databases commonly used by computational biologists. The student will gain an understanding of how bioinformatic data are generated, organized, and used to gain insights into molecular life science.

The CDSM in Bioinformatics will provide the opportunity for biology, biochemistry, computer science and statistics students to identify solutions to biological questions using bioinformatics, to write and implement software on a bioinformatics project, to apply statistical analyses associated with bioinformatics, and to learn algorithms that can be useful for software development in the bioinformatics/computational biology field.

A student may not be awarded both the Cross Disciplinary Studies Minor in Bioinformatics and the Biotechnology minor.

Target majors: Biology, Biochemistry, Statistics, Computer Science and Software Engineering

Program Learning Objectives

1. Describe and apply fundamental concepts of biology related to molecular organization and function.
2. Explain experimental methodologies for the generation of bioinformatics data
3. Find, retrieve, and organize different types of biological data
4. Analyze biological data by implementing algorithms and applying statistical tools
5. Apply the scientific discovery process to a novel research question using bioinformatics and cross-disciplinary approaches
6. Collaborate effectively and professionally on an interdisciplinary team
7. Communicate bioinformatics research results to a variety of audiences
8. Evaluate the impact of bioinformatics and genomics on individuals, organizations, and societies

Minor Requirements and Curriculum

• At least half of the units must be from upper-division courses (3000-4000 level).
• At least half of the units must be taken at Cal Poly (in residence).
• No more than one-third of the units will be taken with credit-no credit grading (CR/NC), not counting courses with mandatory CR/NC. Departments may further limit CR/NC grading if desired.
• A minimum 2.0 GPA is required in all units counted for completion of the minor.

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Courses in this minor may have additional prerequisites that will not count towards the minor. In addition, your ability to select specific elective courses may vary depending upon the curriculum requirements for your major

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A maximum of 1 unit in excess of total will be applied to Depth in Biology/Biochemistry.